Did we say rate complication? That seems almost too simple a name for the subtle and intricate structure which tells us how much we must pay the railroad for the transportation of our goods. When we were visiting the passenger office, we saw something of the work of the rate-clerks there. We learned that, in fact, the railroad creates various classes of rates in the first place; local or round-trip tickets, at, say, three cents a mile for occasional travellers; mileage books for more constant travellers, which bring a wholesale rate of two cents a mile; a third and lowest rate of something less than a cent for that urbane soul, the Commuter. For excursions, where many, many persons were to be moved at one time, perhaps upon a single train, other very low passenger rates were created. We also saw how the railroad, trying to base its passenger charges on the number of miles covered, is compelled to make delicate adjustments on through charges between competitive points. We speak of these things now, because in a way the passenger tariff resembles the freight, and yet compares with it as a child's primer with a Greek lexicon. In an earlier day the thing was very much worse. In fact, at the very beginning there was no real scientific way in which the railroad might regulate its charges, and on some of the very earliest of steel highways the rates were made just half what they had been on the toll-roads, and without regard to the cost of transportation. Thus the competitive feature had its way early in the formulation of a rate-sheet; and there is evidence to assert that in those early days when the railroad had an opportunity it made its tariff as high as it thought folk would stand without a riot, and thus the now historic phrase "what the traffic will bear" came into coinage. As a matter of fact, in those days when scientific bookkeeping was unknown the railroad had no way of accurately knowing just how much it cost to operate, and how that cost should be fairly apportioned between the different classes of its traffic.